Piano Blues
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Piano Blues is blues where the keyboard carries rhythm, harmony, bass, and melodic commentary, often with a rolling left hand and vocal lines that sit behind or ahead of the beat. It ranges from slow saloon laments to driving shuffles, using blue thirds, tremolos, walking bass, turnaround figures, and percussive chord punches.
History
Piano Blues grew from barrelhouses, brothels, lumber camps, rent parties, ragtime pianists, and early jazz settings before the record business captured it in the 1920s and 1930s. Leroy Carr made the piano-vocal blues commercially influential, Roosevelt Sykes and Walter Davis refined the urban style, Cow Cow Davenport and Pinetop Smith pushed boogie patterns, and Memphis Slim and Otis Spann carried piano blues into postwar band settings. The style shaped boogie-woogie, jump blues, Chicago blues, New Orleans R&B, rock and roll piano, and modern blues club repertory.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Peter J. Silvester, A Left Hand Like God
- Paul Oliver, The Story of the Blues
- AllMusic
- The Blues Foundation